


Miss, And Life Just Might Pass You By

by CookieCatSU



Series: The Bub Chronicles [3]
Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half-Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: Bubby and Coomer bond over wanting to kill Gordon, Coomer is self aware, Dr. Coomer is the villian instead of Benrey AU, Evil!Coomer, Faulty code, M/M, he can't remember anything and he's mad, he's aware something is wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:02:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25687018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CookieCatSU/pseuds/CookieCatSU
Summary: Dr. Coomer had a life.Then he has nothing. Nothing but a hole in his chest and the flickering, staticky impression that something is missing.
Relationships: Bubby/Dr. Coomer (Half-Life)
Series: The Bub Chronicles [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1825966
Comments: 4
Kudos: 64





	Miss, And Life Just Might Pass You By

Dr. Coomer doesn't know where he is. That's the scariest part, when he first opens his eyes, and he's surrounded by half opened lockers and soggy, wet stone floors and cement walls, and he doesn't know _where_ he is.

He doesn't know why he is. He doesn't know _who_ he is.

Someone smiles at him, from beside one of the lockers. He is confused, when Coomer looks so lost, when Coomer looks so confused.

"Are you okay?" He asks, voice just slightly snappish because he's worried, absolutely beside himself with worry.

And Dr. Coomer thinks he should remember him, this thin wisp of a scientist (looking at him like he's _everything_ ), but he can't.

There's a stinging nothingness instead.

And somehow, that's the worst part.

* * *

Something is missing.

Dr. Coomer - Coomer who? - feels it every time he leans down to stir his coffee, and there's a sudden surge of strength he can't explain but should be able to, surely.

He gets the same impression when he closes his eyes, and sees flashing glimpses of something, tactile sensations and lab floors and test subjects all at once. He sees with 7 and 12 and 30 sets of eyes, and something is wrong.

He sees the diploma on his wall, and can't remember receiving it. He can't remember his college days. He can't remember anything before Black Mesa.

All he knows is that he must prepare for the Resonance Cascade. Assist Gordon.

That's all there is.

* * *

He meets lots of new people. There's a young man named Tommy, who's just bubbly enough to seem friendly, without edging into the area of stupid, or naive. He throws Coomer a soda when he walks into the lab he was supposed to be sharing with him- Mr. Coolatta, and an unknown scientist who at the time Coomer only knew to be 'pretty grumpy'. He snags it out the air like second nature, and falls into conversation with the yellow shirted scientist with comfortable ease.

He feels like he's known him all his life.

Tommy fills him in on their current project, and Coomer accepts the information with a grateful smile. The details had begun to become fuzzy, for some reason, so the refresher was greatly appreciated.

Their third member appears in the doorway in the middle of a standard pressure check. Coomer doesn't notice him enter because he's so busy at the controls, dampening and increasing internal chamber pressure as is needed.

When he looks up, he's met by the sight of a thin, aging man. It's the same man he'd stumbled into at the lockers, the same man who'd smiled at him as if they'd been friends for years. He scowls at Coomer, now.

There's an itch at the sight of him, one he can't scratch. The sort he's been feeling a lot recently.

He shakes his head. it's nothing surely. Just the old noggin playing tricks on him!

"You're… Bubby, right?" He says, staring at his name tag, stifling a giggle.

'Bubby' opens his mouth, seems to think better of it, snaps it shut, considers for several beats longer than was possibly normal, and then replies with a sneer,

"And you're about to be nothing if you keep laughing, fucker"

Tommy, the poor boy, cringes. Dr. Coomer laughs even harder, though, and he can't help but think: what a wonderful fellow!

He clasps his hand in an energetic handshake, _so happy to be meeting him_ , he says, and Bubby's crestfallen expression can almost be construed as disgust. Coomer catches it, though, and he is confused to say the least.

A little more confused than usual, at least, considering the week he's been having.

He, again, dismisses it as nothing. It's just deja vu, or…. something along those lines.

* * *

Bubby is angry too.

He isn't certain why. He just is. Angry and tired and confused. Shaky and howling and ready to rip someone apart.

Dr. Coomer gives voice to that anger. Direction and vision.

"We should do something" Coomer exclaims, late one night, staring at his hands - fake, not fake, nothing but pixels?

He can still see the canyon's below him, shifting red sand and broken, staticky pixels fraying outward. He can still see the darkness, the empty nothingness, surrounding him on all sides. Crushing and infinite.

Bubby raises an eyebrow. Benrey's off in the corner, disinterested but there.

"As in?"

"We should reclaim our lives, Dr. Bubby. Whatever it takes"

Bubby's expression is bitter, cloudy, for a moment. There's the shortest glimpse of something like _longing_ , as he looks at Dr. Coomer, but it's fleeting... and he's sure he imagined it.

That can't be right.

They hardly know each other.

Then he's nodding, particularly resolute.

"Sounds like a plan"

* * *

Gordon jokes, laughs, and Dr. Coomer glimpses something, something he isn't supposed to be able to see. But he's changed, since he'd been confronted by that immense, pitch black darkness, and suddenly he senses all kinds of things once obscured by thick signal static.

Gordon shimmers, almost. When he pats Dr. Coomer on the back, he feels it, but it's a phantom sensation.

He isn't one of them. When they all shut their eyes to sleep (to eventually fall and die and be laid siege by the program), Gordon does not. He simply disappears, vanishing out of sight like he'd never been.

Because he is smoke and mirrors and fake, and Dr. Coomer, the man with no first name and no life (taken, taken, _taken_ ), hates him.

"Are you alright?" Bubby mutters tiredly, as if he hadn't seen their fellow scientist vanish, like the _otherworldly_ thing he is.

Dr. Coomer nods silently, hands balled into fists. His eyes remain locked on the empty spot Gordon just left behind.

"Yes. I'm just peachy, Bubby"

But it sounds so hollow. So empty.

He's so hollow, so empty, and he decides he hates that too.

* * *

"It's his fault" Dr. Coomer mutters, and he isn't sure how he knows that, but he's never been more certain of anything else in his life.

He's stuck, grasping at fleeting, insubstantial scraps of memory, and it's (the player's?) Gordon's fault.

If he hadn't shown up, the game (he chokes on that word, because apparently his life is just a _game_ now?) wouldn't have started, and none of this would be happening. He'd remember.

Bubby seems to concur.

He's growling faintly, and Coomer gets the sense that he's lost something, too.

So, in that way, they're kindred spirits.

* * *

Bubby is vulgar. Bubby is intelligent.

Bubby is crafty.

Bubby is the perfect partner in crime, because he's resourceful, and he's determined. Unlike Tommy, he isn't too nice to be willing to do what needs be done. He isn't dissuaded by a little bit of blood and guts and gore (even of the human variety).

Unlike Benrey, he isn't too flighty to be able to commit, to be able to focus and persevere.

They work well together, he and Bubby.

Perhaps it's because they're both equally desperate: both missing something, and willing to do anything to get it back.

Coomer is missing _everything_ , and his memory is escaping from between his fingertips, and his world is fake, and he's powerless, and he's willing to do anything to rectify that.

He's going to take back what's been stolen from him.

And he's willing to kill to do it.

* * *

They talk for hours, plotting, scheming. They huddle together whenever the others aren't looking, whispering amongst themselves, heads bent together in corners and behind crates and in the dark. Benrey joins in, every so often, but more often than not it's just Coomer and Bubby.

Them against the world.

Dr. Coomer is seated right beside Bubby, elbows touching. The others have long since fallen asleep, so they whisper not to be heard.

"-Scare him off" Bubby is saying, "Fry him alive like fucking rotisserie"

His grin is ravenously vicious. He laughs, loud and outrageous and satisfied.

Dr. Coomer is starstruck, because it's such a nice laugh.

"Oh yes, I do love chicken!" Dr. Coomer replies with a vicious smirk of his own.

"Hell yeah, chicken a la Gordon. Now that's the good shit"

Dr. Coomer can't help but laugh.

He gazes up at Bubby rather fondly, considering snatching up his hand in his. His heart flutters in his chest at the sight of his sharp toothed smile.

"Only the best for you, Bubby" he says with a cheeky grin.

"No, that's my line, you piece of shit" Bubby replies with a disdainful sniff, "I'm supposed to offer to skewer him alive _for you_ , and then you, the damsel in distress, shower me, you're _savior_ , with praise"

"Hogwash"

His grin is smug. Bubby's eyes are sparkling, bright with mischief, and Coomer can feel himself being pulled under, just so enamored of him.

They've done this before. He… he's falling in love with him, but, not for the first time?

He isn't really sure anymore.

* * *

Dr. Harold P Coomer is 83 years old. He has a doctorate in Astrophysics and minored in Biology. He chipped a tooth when he was seven, and the replacement crown still tastes mildly of silver.

He has 300 clones, all of which died at Gordon Freeman's hands.

He is alone.

The abandoned lab he's now trapped in is maddeningly quiet. He stares at half broken test tubes and beakers, hunched over and eyes squinted, and tries to take comfort in all he now knows. It's hard.

Gordon chokes at his feet, and Dr. Coomer is so satisfied, in such a perverse, sickly way, he wants to gag, now. He picks him up by the neck of his HEV suit, just so angry, ready to crush him between his thumb and forefinger, and the only thing that stops him is, surprisingly, Benrey.

Benrey, with his eldritch power, too large to belong nor be contained.

It's wrong. He feels it, deep in his bones, in every corrupt fleck of code. He's supposed to be a _guide_ , a _friend_. He was supposed to _help_.

What went wrong?

Time stops, slowing to a standstill. Then there's a man across from him, cross legged beneath the archway entrance to the lab, blinking rapidly. A plethora of questions blooms upon Coomer's tongue, but he doesn't ask any of them. He doesn't care, he decides.

He turns back forward, staring at his open palms.

"I'm sorry" The suit-wearing man says, and his head tilts, "This isn't, isn't how this was supposed to happen. I obviously have some. Cleaning up to do"

He sighs, wistful, almost.

"You. Weren't meant to be angry. You weren't built for it"

He presses his hand to Coomer's shoulder, and there's a sudden burst of energy. He feels like he's breathing, seeing, for the first time, everything suddenly crisply clear.

"Would you like to go back?"

* * *

"I-" Dr. Coomer presses his hand to the laminate surface of the photograph, the one depicting him and Bubby together in the lab, with him sticking his tongue out and Bubby looking annoyed. He traces a thumb across Bubby's face, shaky and slow, and he can feel when it all clicks into place. A tearful smile breaks out upon his face, "I remember!"

It'd been really dark, that night.

Coomer remembers the smell of his... Bubby's cologne - there's the hint of flowery orange and sea salt, which he catches a whiff of as the man passes him, test tube in hand and grumbling. The air is a little heavy. They have a deadline quickly approaching, and he knows Bubby is getting stressed, because he's becoming just a bit frazzled at the edges.

He grabs onto the sleeve of Bubby's lab coat, and pulls him down toward him with a loud chuckle. Anything, to lighten the mood.

"You bastard" Bubby exclaims, but he's laughing too, "You're lucky I have nerves of steel, or we'd both be melting like shitty gumballs"

He indicates the test tube : The liquid inside was a pale purple, Dr. Coomer now recalls : still clutched in his fingers, raised above them, "Now let me go. I've got work to do"

Harold just presses his face into Bubby's back, eyes bright with mischief, and pulls him even closer, hands wrapped around his waist.

"No can do, Bubby Hubby" Coomer replies warmly, "Work will have to wait. Right now is cuddle time"

"Insufferable" Bubby had replied with a huffy laugh.

It's such a sweet moment, so comfortable and warm. One that had to be immortalized, one that, he decides, he never wanted to forget.

He vividly remembers taking the picture. He'd scavenged up one of the disposable cameras thrown amongst the other office supplies, pens and clipboards and such, and pressed his cheek against Bubby's so they could fit into the little camera lens. Bubby fusses the entire time, but he still smiles when Harold says cheese.

It all comes flooding back so fast, he can't help but gasp.

He's struck by how much he _loved_ this man.

"I _remember_ this" He turns, photograph forgotten, and launches himself at Bubby (his lovely, beloved Bubby), who stiffens, before wrapping his own arms around him. "I remember _us_!" He says, and his voice is thick with relief, "I remember me and I remember you…"

"Took you long enough" Bubby replies, a little irritated, but he's smiling so warmly.

Dr. Coomer knows he's relieved, more than anything. It's easy to tell, after 50 years.

"I'm back," Coomer says, fervid.

" _I'm back, and I'm not going anywhere_ "


End file.
